Jaws of Darkness

Nineteen

Hajjaj hated coming to Cottbus for any number of reasons. He disliked having to wear clothes. He really disliked going out in weather cold enough to make wearing clothes a good idea. Most of all, though, he disliked having to come to beg for mercy for his defeated kingdom.

“So good to see you again, your Excellency,” said Ansovald, who had beenKingSwemmel ’s minister to Zuwayza and was now… what? The man who delivered Swemmel’s terms to Hajjaj, certainly. Past that, the Zuwayzi foreign minister didn’t know and preferred not to guess.

“Always a pleasure,” Hajjaj lied. As far as he was concerned, Ansovald was even more boorish than most Unkerlanters.

“Funny we’re both speaking Algarvian, isn’t it?” Ansovald said now. His laugh showed large, yellow teeth. “Pretty soon we’ll squash the redheads flat, and nobody will need to speak their miserable language anymore.”

“I assure you, the irony was not lost on me, either,” Hajjaj said. “But, unfortunately, my Unkerlanter has never been fluent.” That was true, though Unkerlant had held Zuwayza throughout his youth and young manhood.

Ansovald grunted. “Your folks probably thought it was beneath ‘em to have you learn.” That was also true, though Hajjaj, unlike his host, was too polite to say any such thing. Ansovald went on, “Fat lot of good your Algarvian will do you from here on out.”

“You may be right,” Hajjaj said in tones as chilly as he could make them. “Shall we get down to business?”

“That’s what you’re here for-to get the business.” Ansovald laughed. Hajjaj managed something an inattentive man might have reckoned a smile. But the Unkerlanter wasn’t wrong. He was crude, but he wasn’t wrong. Swemmel could dictate terms to Zuwayza. He could, and he would.

“Go ahead,” Hajjaj said. Outside, there was frost in the gutters. Here in this stuffy chamber of the royal palace, sweat ran down his face. That had only a little to do with the Unkerlanter-style tunic he wore. As if to make up for the cold in which they lived, Unkerlanters heated their buildings well past what even a Zuwayzi thought the point of comfort.

“I have here a list of conditions, prepared for me by His Majesty, KingSwemmel himself,” Ansovald declared. He took a leaf of paper from his belt pouch, unfolded it, and studied it portentously.

“Go ahead,” Hajjaj repeated. He knew he sounded weary. He felt weary, down to the very core of his being. He’d hoped for more than four years that this day would never come. He’d feared for two years that it would. Now it was here, and he had to endure it.

“Item,” Ansovald said. “Henceforward, the border between Unkerlant and Zuwayza shall be that which was established by treaty here in Cottbus at the end of the last war between our two kingdoms.”

“On behalf ofKingShazli, I accept,” Hajjaj said at once. He tried not to show how relieved he was. Both he and his king had feared the Unkerlanters would use the victories they’d won against Zuwayza to extinguish the kingdom altogether. Anything short of that was, by Unkerlanter standards, generosity.

“Item,” Ansovald went on, inexorable as a landslide. “For the rest of the war against Algarve, and for fifteen years afterwards, Unkerlant shall freely be able to move ships into and out of the ports on the east coast of Zuwayza, and shall freely be able to draw any necessary supplies from those ports.”

“I accept,” Hajjaj said again, reflecting that it could have been worse. “Your admirals should bear in mind that our ports there are small. They do not overflow with supplies.”

“That’s your worry, not ours,” Ansovald told him. Hajjaj returned another of those almost-smiles. Ansovald continued, “Item: Zuwayza shall give up her alliance with Algarve and enter into alliance with Unkerlant againstKingMezentio and all who fight alongside him.”

“I accept,” Hajjaj said once more. Again, he’d expected nothing less.

“Item,” Ansovald said. “Zuwayzi soldiers shall capture, disarm, and turn over to Unkerlant all Algarvian soldiers, sailors, and dragonfliers now in your kingdom.”

“We shall do everything we can in that regard,” Hajjaj said. “You must understand, though, that Mezentio’s soldiers are resisting my countrymen by force of arms even as we speak.” Much of that was an elaborate charade to let the Algarvians safely withdraw from Zuwayza. Hajjaj knew as much, and also knew Ansovald and Swemmel had better never find out.

Ansovald’s sniff said he had his suspicions, but he did no more than sniff. He proceeded. “Item: Zuwayza shall henceforth, in her dealings with other kingdoms, consult with Unkerlant wherever necessary, and shall bear Unkerlant’s interests in mind at all times.”

Hajjaj couldn’t smile at that. KingSwemmel was imposing a protectorate after all. Still, though, it was a partial, relatively polite, protectorate. He wasn’t setting Ansovald up in Bishah as governor of a new-or rather, old-Unkerlanter province. And, Hajjaj told himself, we never can forget our big southern neighbor, however much we wish we could. “I accept,” he said. He knew he sounded wounded, but he couldn’t do anything about that.

“Item,” Ansovald went on. “For the damage Zuwayza has done to Unkerlant, you shall pay an indemnity of seventy million Unkerlanter thals, in silver or in kind, in the space of three years after signing this agreement.”

Once more, Hajjaj said what he had to say: “I accept.” That would beggar the kingdom. It would beggar it, aye, but wouldn’t quite break it. Someone had done some very precise calculating there. Silence fell. Hajjaj looked across the table at Ansovald. “What else, your Excellency?”

Ansovald refolded the paper and set it on the tabletop. “Those areKingSwemmel ’s requirements for peace with Zuwayza.”

Is that all? Hajjaj didn’t say it, though he came undiplomatically close. Swemmel could have done far worse. He’d expected Swemmel to do far worse. His suspicion kindled. Why hadn’t Swemmel done worse? He couldn’t ask Ansovald. The only thing that occurred to him was that Swemmel wanted to fight Algarve without distractions, and so granted Zuwayza relatively-but only relatively-mild terms.

“I shall adviseKingShazli to agree to these terms,” Hajjaj said. “They are not too high a price for us to pay for leaving this war.”

“You should have thought of that before you got into it,” Ansovald said.

“No doubt,” Hajjaj said politely. “Life would be simpler if we could know such things ahead of time.” He paused, then added, “I do have one question for you.”

“Go ahead,” Ansovald said. “But if you think his Majesty will change anything in there, you can think again.”

“I wouldn’t dream of imagining such a thing,” Hajjaj said, and meant it. “But there were once some broadsheets scattered about that spoke of a Reformed Principality of Zuwayza under a certainPrinceMustanjid. Do I gather from what I see here thatKingSwemmel no longer supports any such entity, whatever it may have been?”A threat to overthrow Shazli, that’s what it was.

“Did you hear it mentioned anywhere in these terms?” Ansovald asked.

“I did not,” Hajjaj admitted.

“Then acknowledging it is not required of your kingdom,” Ansovald told him. Hajjaj nodded and said no more. Up in northern Unkerlant or southern, occupied, Zuwayza, the Zuwayzi noble who’d kissed King Swemmel’s foot-or some other portion of Swemmel’s anatomy-was probably feeling ill-used right now: the Unkerlanters wouldn’t install him as King, or even Reformed Prince, of Zuwayza after all. Hajjaj was not prepared to waste much sympathy on Mustanjid.

“May I have access to a crystallomancer, to tellKingShazli your terms before I sign them?” he asked.

“If you insist,” Ansovald said. “But I thought you came here as a plenipotentiary, with full power to make agreements on your own.”

“I did come here so. I do have that power,” Hajjaj said. “But KingShazli is my sovereign, asKingSwemmel is yours. Would you do anything without letting your sovereign know you were going to do it?”

“No.” For a moment, stark fear glinted in Ansovald’s eyes. Hajjaj was not afraid of Shazli; he liked the bright young man who ruled Zuwayza, as he’d liked Shazli’s father before him. But he’d thought he knew what Unkerlanters thought of their king, and what sort of power Swemmel enjoyed in this great, broad land. Now he saw he was right, and the seeing saddened him. Ansovald needed to gather himself before he could say, “It shall be as you wish. You may speak to your king.”

When things happened in Unkerlant, they happened with a furious energy that almost kept a stranger from noticing how often they did not happen at all. Not five minutes after Hajjaj had made his request, a crystallomancer stood beside him and-after a brief colloquy with Ansovald in Unkerlanter-spoke to him in halting Algarvian: “Your king, Excellency.”

“I see. Thank you.” Hajjaj sank down on a stool before the crystal that held Shazli’s image. “Your Majesty, let me give you the terms they will impose on us,” he said, switching to Zuwayzi.

“Go ahead,” Shazli answered in the same language. He stiffened ever so slightly, like a man bracing himself for a blow.

Hajjaj went through them one by one. Shazli asked a few questions; he answered them. When he was finished, he said, “Your Majesty, unless you order me not to do so, I shall accept these terms. I do not think we can do anything to improve them, and they are not so harsh as they might have been.” More than that he would not say, not when Swemmel surely had someone who spoke Zuwayzi listening to this conversation.

“They are not light, either,” Shazli said, which was also true. From a different kingdom, they might even have been reckoned onerous. But Swemmel was willing to leave Shazli on the throne and Zuwayza a kingdom in its own right. Had he chosen to go further, he could have. With a sigh, Shazli said, “I agree. Things being as they are, we must accept. Go ahead, your Excellency.”

“Thank you, your Majesty,” Hajjaj said. He turned to Ansovald and came back to the Algarvian they shared: “The king agrees, as I was sure he would. The terms are acceptable to Zuwayza.”

In a different kingdom, the ceremony would have been more elaborate.

Men from the leading news sheets would have crowded in to watch Hajjaj surrender. Here, what went into the news sheets came straight from Swemmel and his ministers anyway. Hajjaj signed the new treaty in a barren little palace antechamber, and had to remind Ansovald to get him a second copy so he could take it back to Bishah.

After he signed, he did get supper: an enormous plate of fatty boiled pork, boiled cabbage, and stewed parsnips. Ansovald got the same sort of supper, and consumed it with relish, washing it down with several mugs of ale. Food for a cold kingdom, Hajjaj thought. He ate what he could. It wasn’t badly prepared, but ran far from the direction his tastes usually took.

An enormous soft mattress with a prince’s ransom of wool blankets and fur coverlets was a bed for a cold kingdom, too. No matter how strange and foreign it felt to Hajjaj, though, he slept well that night. My kingdom will live. How could he toss and turn, with the relief that thought brought uppermost in his mind?

Colonel Sabrinohad not seen such a great wild melee of footsoldiers and, above all, of behemoths since the great battles in the Durrwangen bulge more than a year earlier. Now, though, the Unkerlanters and Algarvians were fighting east of Patras, between the Yaninan capital and the border between Yanina and Algarve. Swemmel’s men had broken through the Algarvian line with a great force of behemoths-whereupon the Algarvians at either end of the breakthrough, responding as smartly as they might have back in the days when they seemed to have the world on a string, fought toward one another and trapped the Unkerlanters who’d been overbold.

But whether the Unkerlanters would stay trapped was a different question. Peering down from his dragon, Sabrino shook his head in sour wonder. How many behemoths did Swemmel’s men have around the town of Mavromouni? Too many-he was certain of that. Had the trap really closed on them, or were they part of a trap closing on his countrymen?

Sabrino whacked his dragon with the goad. The beast screamed. It swung its head toward him on the end of its long, scaly neck. He whacked it again, harder. No matter what it thought, it wasn’t going to flame him out of the harness. He whacked it once more, and it dove toward the ground. The rest of his wing, what was left of it, followed.

Wind howled by him, a cold, nasty wind. The behemoths below swelled as if by sorcery. Before long, he saw that some of them had Yaninans aboard, not Unkerlanters. His lips drew apart in a mirthless grin. “You whoresons won’t get any more use out of them than we did,” he predicted.

However much he was tempted to attack the Yaninans for betraying Algarve, he didn’t. Without the Unkerlanters to stiffen them and give them the courage they would surely never find on their own, KingTsavellas ’ men were no great threat. They never had been, and they never would be. The Unkerlanters, on the other hand…

Sabrino chose his behemoth, and steered toward its tail. KingSwemmel ’s men aboard it had a moment to see horror diving on them, a moment in which to try to swing their personal sticks his way. One of them even got the chance to blaze, though wildly. Then Sabrino tapped the dragon on the side of the neck.

It was always glad to get the command to flame. Fire gushed from its jaws, engulfing the Unkerlanters and the behemoth they rode. Sabrino had had to wait till the dragon was almost on top of the behemoth before letting it flame. Algarve was desperately short of quicksilver these days, and without it dragonfire lost much of its heat and distance. That didn’t matter so much against behemoths, which had no hope of outrunning flame even at short range. Against Unkerlanter dragons, though, it was one more disadvantage to set beside a crushing disadvantage in numbers.

Against which, Algarve has… what? Sabrino wondered as the dragon clawed its way back up into the air again. Experience came to mind. He, for instance, had been flying dragons and commanding this wing since the day the war began. But so many dragonfliers were dead, and their replacements raw as any Unkerlanters.

They’re so young, Sabrino thought. It wasn’t that they were young enough to be his sons. Some of them were young enough to be his grandsons, he having fought in the Six Years’ War. They’re so young, and so brave. They’re braver than I am -powers above know that’s true. They go up there not knowing anything, and knowing they don’t know anything. But they go up anyway, with a smile, sometimes even with a song. I couldn‘t do that, not for anything.

Here came a swarm of Unkerlanter dragons, all in the dingy rock-gray paint that made them so hard to see, especially against autumn clouds. The men who flew them were better at what they did than they had been when the war was new. The Unkerlanters used many more crystals than they had in those days, and responded to trouble much more quickly. It made fighting a war against them look altogether too much like work.

But they held formation as rigidly as if they’d been glued together. That was how they’d been trained: to follow their leader and do as he did. Some few of them outgrew it and became pretty good dragonfliers. More, though, never learned. Sabrino wasted no pity on them. If they survived his lessons, they would pick up something. He hoped they didn’t.

“Melee!” he shouted into his crystal. “Break apart and melee!”

Against good dragonfliers in formation, the order would have been suicidal: break up a smaller force to oppose a larger, better-disciplined one? Madness, nothing but madness.

The Unkerlanters, though, weren’t good dragonfliers: this wasn’t a wing of freelancers, of the skilled fliers the Algarvians called Swemmel’s falcons. These were just the men who’d been closest to the battle by Mavromouni. And if you could rely on any one thing from such men, you could rely on their holding formation too bloody long.

Sure enough, when the Algarvians started swooping at their tails and up from below at their dragons’ bellies, they didn’t break out of their box till several of them had already tumbled from the sky. Sabrino had seen that time and again. If they’d just broken up and put two or three dragons on every one of his, as they could have, he would have had a much harder time of it. But they didn’t. They wouldn’t. They never did.

They paid for their rigidity, too, as they usually did. By the time Sabrino ordered his wing back toward its latest makeshift dragon farm, he’d counted nine Unkerlanter dragons slain. He’d lost three of his own followers. The only thing troubling him was that, even at three losses for one, the foe could afford it better than he.

Down fluttered his dragons, some of them burned, all of them weary, to the dragon farm in what had probably been some Yaninan peasant’s turnip field. Dragon handlers trotted forward to secure the beasts to their iron stakes and tend to their wounds and feed them whatever meat they’d managed to scrounge from the surrounding countryside. The handlers were all Algarvians. Yaninan handlers, nowadays, tended only Yaninan dragons, and Yaninan dragons flew alongside the rock-gray beasts of Unkerlant.

Sabrino wondered howMajorScoufas fared these days. Were it not for Scoufas, he would probably have been languishing in a captives’ camp. He wished the Yaninan officer no ill-but if they met in the air, he would do his best to kill him.

Can I? The question was more interesting than he would have liked.

Scoufas made a first-rate dragonflier, no doubt about it. He would be flying a fresher dragon, and one brim-full of brimstone and quicksilver. Sabrino kicked at the muddy ground, angry at himself. If you don’t think you can win every time you go up, you ‘d do better staying on the ground.

That was an obvious truth. Another obvious truth was that he couldn’t afford to do any such thing. He kicked at the wet dirt again. No Algarvian could afford to do anything but whatever he was best at that might hold back the Unkerlanter tide, and to keep doing it till he either got killed or he collapsed from exhaustion. Sabrino knew he wasn’t far from either.

A road ran not far from the dragon farm. Some Yaninans fled east along it. They couldn’t stomach the Unkerlanter alliance, no matter whatKingTsavellas might have to say about it. But others moved west, something Sabrino hadn’t seen before. Maybe they lived farther east, and were hoping to avoid long battles in their own neighborhoods. Or maybe they hated Algarvians as much as their countrymen hated Unkerlanters. Some Yaninans did.

Being the wing commander, Sabrino got the abandoned farmhouse instead of a tent. With his old bones, he was glad to have the comfort of four walls around him, even beat-up, shabby walls.

He lit a couple of big tallow candles. They filled the one-room farmhouse with the stink of hot fat. By their flickering light, he started to write a report on the fight his wing had just been through. How many reports have I written in this war? Too bloody many, that’s certain sure.

And then another, even less happy, thought occurred to him. How many of them have done any bloody good? He didn’t know the answer there, not in numbers, but he knew what he needed to know. Not many. Not enough -that’s certain sure, too.

He wondered why he bothered. Would anyone in Trapani care if he fell silent? Someone might-his silence could give a superior who wanted to sack him the excuse he needed to do it. That thought alone was plenty to keep Sabrino stubbornly writing. He didn’t make things easy for the foe. Why should he for his alleged friends?

A sentry knocked on the door and said, “Someone to see you, sir.”

“I don’t want to see anyone,” Sabrino answered, not looking up.

“I think you should, sir,” the sentry said.

That made Sabrino raise an eyebrow. It also roused his curiosity. He stuck his pen into the bottle of ink, got to his feet, and went to open the door. There stood the sentry. And there behind him, in a common soldier’s cloak and boots, stoodKingMezentio. “What in blazes are you doing here?” Sabrino asked harshly.

“Seeing how things fare in the field,” the King of Algarve answered. “And that should be, ‘What in blazes are you doing here, your Majesty?’ May I come in?”

“Aye.” Numbly, Sabrino stood aside. Mezentio walked in and closed the door behind him. Sabrino said, “I have some spirits, if you want any.”

“No, thank you, your Excellency.” Mezentio took off his hat and cocked his bald head to one side. “Who knows? You might poison them.”

Sabrino shook his head. “I wouldn’t go that far. I might say, ‘I told you so.’ I cursed well did tell you so, your Majesty, and you, powers below eat you, you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“And do you think it would have made a counterfeit copper’s worth of difference if I had?” Mezentio retorted. “We had no chance to take Cottbus without doing what we did, and we couldn’t whip Unkerlant unless we took Cottbus. And so-”

“So what?” Sabrino said. If Mezentio felt like executing him for the lese majesty of interrupting, he didn’t much care. “So fornicating what? We did it, and we still didn’t take fornicating Cottbus, and how many Kaunians and Unkerlanters are dead now who’d be alive if we’d left well enough alone? How many tens of thousands?”

Mezentio shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. The Kaunians have been our deadly foes since time out of mind. They deserve whatever happened to them. If they all had a single neck, I would have been rid of every one of them at the same time. I may yet manage that.”

“You would do better to make peace,” Sabrino said. “How many Lagoans and Kuusamans think our name is a stench in the nostrils of civilization these days? All of them, or near enough.”

“Who will make peace with me now? What sort of peace would it be?” Mezentio asked, two questions for which Sabrino had no good answers. The king went on: “Unfortunately, you are in large measure correct about the islanders, and as for Swemmel of Unkerlant-you know the answer there as well as I do. And so I shall triumph or I shall die, and Algarve with me.” He glared at Sabrino. “And you, your Excellency, you shall remain a colonel till one of those or the other happens. I wondered if you’d changed your ways, but I see that was another wasted hope.”

Sabrino laughed. KingMezentio glared harder than ever. Laughing still, Sabrino said, “Why am I not surprised, your Majesty?”

Rain spattered the surface of the Twegen River. Blowing in from out of the west, it spatteredColonelSpinello ’s face, too. As he looked across from the ruins of Eoforwic to the Unkerlanter emplacements on the other side of the river, Spinello didn’t mind the rain so much. Were he down in the south of Unkerlant, it would long since have turned to sleet and snow.

What he minded was the feeling he needed eyes in the back of his head. The Forthwegians who’d fought so long and hard had surrendered, aye-or most of them had. But some still blazed at the Algarvians in Eoforwic whenever they saw a chance. Spinello’s brigade took a casualty or two from snipers almost every day.

He looked back over his shoulder. Hanging there from a balcony was the corpse of a Forthwegian his men had caught a couple of days before. Along with the noose, the fellow had a placard tied round his neck, this is what you get if you blaze at an algarvian, it warned in Algarvian, classical Kaunian, and presumably Forthwegian, although Spinello couldn’t read that last.

That kind of warning would have deterred him. Some Forthwegians, though, were willing, even eager, to kill Algarvians regardless of whether it cost them their lives. It usually did, and painfully, but they were still hard to guard against.

He peered across the Twegen again. The river wasn’t very wide. Had the Unkerlanters wanted to force a crossing, they probably could have done it. Instead, they seemed content for the time being to pound Eoforwic to pieces while they built up their forces. Some of them were walking along the river-bank as openly as if they were back in their own kingdom.

“Crystallomancer!” Spinello shouted in some annoyance. He had to shout it more than once, which annoyed him further.

“Here, sir,” a smooth-cheeked youngster said at last.

Spinello shook his head. The youth looked like an apprentice, not a real soldier. But he would have to do. “Connect me to our egg-tossers,” Spinello said. “Those whoresons over there need to learn some respect for us.”

“Aye, sir.” The crystallomancer did make the etheric connection with commendable speed. “Go ahead, sir.”

“Thank you.” Spinello stared into the crystal at the image of a gruff officer who might have fought in the Six Years’ War. He quickly explained what he wanted.

“Aye, we can do that,” the veteran said. “Can’t have those bastards think they rule the roost even if they do, eh?” He gestured sharply, Spinello supposed to his own crystallomancer. Spinello’s crystal flared and then went inert.

A few minutes later, eggs began bursting on the east side of the Twegen. The rain kept Spinello from seeing as much as he would have liked, but Swemmel’s soldiers wouldn’t go for their afternoon stroll along the riverbank any more. He was sure of that. They’d hide in holes the way he did, the ones not too seared by sorcerous energy to worry about hiding ever again.

All that might have been true. But the Unkerlanters also took revenge. Spinello wondered how many egg-tossers they had, there on the other side of the Twegen. Plenty to knock down big chunks of Eoforwic that had somehow stayed standing through the Forthwegian uprising. Plenty to stir around the chunks that had already fallen down and to make big chunks into little ones.

And plenty to make Spinello laugh, there in his hole with his face pressed to the earth and with his heart pounding from fear he couldn’t quell. The Unkerlanters could have pounded Eoforwic just as hard while the Algarvians were crushing the uprising. They could have, but they hadn’t. And why should they have? he wondered. We were doing their dirty work for them. Now they have to do their own.

The other obvious implication there was that Swemmel’s soldiers thought they could overrun Eoforwic whenever they chose. He’d been fighting them for three years. He had the nasty feeling they knew what they were about.

What does that say about Algarve? he thought at the ground quivered beneath him like an animal in pain. Does it say we’re going to lose the war? If he looked at things rationally, he couldn’t see how it would say anything else. But war wasn’t altogether a rational business. He’d seen enough of it to know that, too. If our secret sorceries come to fruition, or even if the Lagoans and Kuusamans get sick of staying allied to that madman of a Swemmel…

It could happen. Many stranger things had happened. Being something of a student of history, Spinello knew as much. Lagoas and Kuusamo were civilized kingdoms. Why would they stay in harness with a barbarian maniac like Swemmel, especially when they were all fighting against another civilized kingdom like Algarve?

Kaunians. The word tolled in his mouth like an iron bell, seeming louder than all the eggs bursting around and behind him. But then he shook his head. Lagoans and Kuusamans weren’t Kaunian folk. Lagoans were Algarvic, with blood ties to Algarve and Sibiu. Why should they care what happened to blonds? They’d fought plenty of wars againstKaunianValmiera.

They don’t want Algarve lord of all Derlavai. That made Spinello laugh, too, though he didn’t really find it funny. So they help Swemmel against us, and Unkerlantbecomes lord of all Derlavai. What good does that do them?

He laughed again. That’s the next war. It isn‘t this one. Who worries about tomorrow when he’s fighting to stay alive today?

The Algarvians were fighting to stay alive today, fighting in a way Lagoas and Kuusamo weren’t-and having less luck with it. Somewhere not far away from Spinello, someone started screaming. He cursed. The scream had words, and some of them he recognized as Algarvian. He wouldn’t have cared much what happened to a Forthwegian, but a countryman was a countryman.

Before he thought about what he was doing, he popped out of his hole and ran toward the screams. One of his troopers was doing the same thing. “Get down, Colonel!” the soldier yelled, his voice coming to Spinello by fits and starts through the roar of the bursting eggs.

“Shut up,” Spinello said. The soldier didn’t argue. Spinello almost wished he would have. I’ve got a ribbon with my wound badge, he thought. Do I really want another one? He might easily get killed, too, but he refused even to think about that. He couldn’t do anything about it, anyhow.

Youcoulddive into a hole, fool, the rational part of his mind insisted. But then he spotted the wounded Algarvian and loped toward him. The trooper followed. It was, he saw as he stooped beside the hurt man, the crystallomancer who’d put him in touch with the egg-tossers.

“Belly,” the trooper said, glancing at the wound. “That’s not so good.”

“I know.” Spinello didn’t want to look at it. “Here, son.” He gave the crystallomancer a long draught of opium-laced spirits. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do. When he started to put a dressing on the wound, the crystallomancer, only half conscious, tried to fight him off.

The trooper grabbed the wounded man’s hands. “We’re going to have to get him to the healers,” he said as Spinello worked.

Spinello tapped his wound badge. “My pals didn’t let me down when I got hurt. Time to pay them back.” The common soldier only nodded. He wore a wound badge, too, and already had two ribbons under it.

When they lifted the crystallomancer, he shrieked like a cursed soul.

Then, mercifully, he did pass out. They half carried, half dragged him back to a battered building-more battered now than Spinello remembered it- where healers were hard at work. The place smelled of smoke and unwashed men and the butcher-shop odor of blood and the latrine stink of pierced entrails. Spinello did his best to hide his shudder. He’d been in places like this before, when he was the one who suffered. The smells made his body remember, and remember too well.

“Hey, quacks!” the trooper said, perhaps hiding his own unease with bravado. “We’ve got another one for you to practice on.”

A harried healer hurried over. He took one look at the crimsoned, soaking bandages and winced. “Belly wound, eh? We can’t do much with that here. We’ll have to put him on ice and ship him back to Algarve. Maybe they can help him back there, maybe not. He’ll have some kind of chance, anyway.”

With a nod, Spinello said, “That’s about what I thought.” A dragon had flown him out of Sulingen after a sniper put a beam through the right side of his chest. Now he could take a more detached interest in the proceedings.

A couple of eggs burst close enough to make the ground shake under his feet. Irritably, the healer said, “Don’t they ever run out of those cursed things?”

Almost on cue, the pounding of Eoforwic eased. “Who knows?” Spinello said in glad surprise. “Maybe they do.”

“Not bloody likely.” The healer put on a pair of long, thick, obviously insulated gloves. He called for a colleague, who did the same thing. The two men lifted the crystallomancer and set him down in a box that looked something like a coffin and something like a rest crate. Without the gloves, the spell inside the box would have sorcerously frozen their hands and arms in short order, too. The healer muttered a charm over the box. Then he scrawled on the outside a diagnosis in the much-abbreviated classical Kaunian medical men used. With a nod to Spinello, he said, “We’ll get him out of here. What happens after that is in the hands of the powers above.”

“I hope he comes through all right,” Spinello said. “We’ll need all the mages of any sort we can get our hands on.”

“I wish I could say you were wrong,” the healer answered. “When we start using our secret sorceries-”

“Aye, by the powers above!” Spinello broke in eagerly. “You’re a sorcerer yourself. How soon do you think that will be?”

“I don’t know,” the healer said. “I wish I did. But only Mezentio and, I suppose, a few of our first-rank mages could tell you for certain. I will say this, though-it had better be soon.”

“It certainly should,” Spinello said. “We’ve lost everything we ever got in Unkerlant, and so many men to go with that. We’re practically back to the point where we were when we started fighting Swemmel. And the east…” He didn’t want to think about the east. He didn’t want to think about the Unkerlanters’ not being checked here in the west, either-they were only gathering themselves for the next leap forward.

“All true, every word of it.” The healer sounded glum. “But that’s not the worst. The worst is, where are we going to get the blonds to make the secret sorceries work?”

“I don’t know,” Spinello answered. “I wish I did. We can start grabbing ordinary Forthwegians, I suppose-or Yaninans, those filthy traitors.”

On that gloomy note, he took his leave. He saw some ordinary Forthwegians going through the ruins of Eoforwic. Every so often, one of them would stoop and put something in a basket. Gathering mushrooms, he thought, and made a face at the very idea. Algarvians didn’t eat mushrooms. As far as Spinello was concerned, people who did deserved whatever happened to them.

Snow already lay thick on the ground in the Naantali district. Pekka wasn’t surprised; it would be snowing down in Kajaani, too, and Kajaani had the sea to moderate its climate. Some of the mages from the northern, more temperate parts of Kuusamo and Lagoas complained about the weather. They couldn’t do anything about it-what mage could?-but that didn’t stop them from complaining.

“Me, I’ve come to like it better this time of year,” Fernao said. “You can go outside without the mosquitoes’ eating you alive.”

“It’s only weather,” Pekka said, ignoring snowstorms in mid-autumn with the ease of someone who took hard winters for granted. “What I have to complain about isn’t the snow. It’sthose!’

She pointed first to one of the heavy sticks now emplaced around the hostel and the blockhouse, then to another and another. When she looked up to the sky, she caught a glimpse of a patrolling dragon through a break in the clouds overhead. The dragon was painted in a pattern of sky blue and sea green, the colors of Kuusamo.

“We have a saying in Lagoas.” Fernao paused, probably translating it into Kuusaman from his own language. “Trying to make soup after the dog has stolen the bone.”

“Exactly,” Pekka said. “How are the Algarvians going to reach us now? They’ve left most of Valmiera. Their dragons can’t possibly fly here from the lands they still hold. And none of these things were in place when that cursed dragondid attack us.”

Fernao took her hand. She squeezed his. When Leino came home, she would have a lot of things to worry about, a lot of choices to make. She knew as much. Meanwhile, she enjoyed each day-and each night-as if tomorrow would never come. Later? What was later?

Slowly, Fernao said, “Saying what the Algarvians can’t possibly do worries me a little. They’ve already done too many things nobody thought they could do.”

“Too many things nobody thought theywould do,” Pekka said, which wasn’t quite the same thing. “Too many things nobody thought anyone would do.”

Now Fernao squeezed her hand. “What we’ve done here has gone a long way toward keeping people from doing things like that again. That’s mostly thanks to you, you know, to you and your experiments.”

Pekka shook her head. “MasterSiuntiois the one who really deserves the credit. AndMasterIlmarinen. I just did the work. They were the ones who saw I’d stumbled onto something important and figured out what it meant.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Fernao said. “You never have.”

“Nonsense,” Pekka said, and then, “I got a letter from my sister this morning.”

She’d wanted to change the subject, and she succeeded. Fernao walked along in silence for a little while, kicking up snow at every step. At last, he asked, “And what does she have to say?”

“Nothing too much,” Pekka answered. “Olavin’s solicitors paid a call on her. She wasn’t very happy about that.”

“I believe it.” In Fernao’s long, pale Lagoan face, his slanted eyes were usually a reminder that he had a little Kuusaman blood in him, too. Now, though, they just made his expression harder to read. After a few more silent paces, he said, “Are we going to have to worry about that one of these days?”

Pekka had forced the future out of her purview. Now Fernao brought it back. She wished he hadn’t. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.” She kicked up some snow of her own-kicked it at Fernao, in fact. “Let’s go back to the hostel.” She turned and started off without waiting to see whether he followed.

He did, and went up the steps only a pace behind her. “Whatever happens, we’ll see it through,” he said.

“What else can we do?” she said, wishing he would keep quiet. Weren’t men supposed to be the ones who didn’t want to commit themselves? That didn’t fit Fernao. He wanted to run away with her. She was the one full of doubts, full of complications. She sighed. Why couldn’t things be simpler?

Going into the hostel certainly made things no simpler. There stood Ilmarinen, just inside the front entrance. He had been talking with a couple of the workmen still busy repairing the hostel after the Algarvian attack. But when he saw Pekka and Fernao together, he broke off and came over to them. “And what were the two of you doing out there?” he purred.

By the way he said it, the question could have only one possible answer. But Pekka replied, “Don’t be silly. It’s much too cold outside forthat.”

Ilmarinen looked disappointed. Fernao asked him, “And what have you been doing in here?”

“Aye, whathave you been doing?” Pekka echoed. “Have you finished the calculations I asked you for the other day?”

To her surprise, Ilmarinen nodded. “They’re finished, all right.”

“And?” Pekka asked when he said no more.

“And it’s just what we thought it was,” the master mage answered grimly. “Did you think the calculations would show it wouldn’t work? Not bloody likely, not after we’ve spent all this time tearing up the landscape around here.”

“You don’t sound happy,” Fernao observed.

Though much the shorter of the two, Ilmarinen contrived to look down his nose at Fernao. “Should I? What the Algarvians visited on Yliharma, now we can visit on Trapani. Shall I throw my hat in the air? Shall I shout huzzah? Now we can match the barbarians in barbarism. Huzzah indeed!”

“Better that we be able to match them than that wenot be able to match them,” Pekka said. “That’s the assumption we’ve been working on.”

“No.” Ilmarinen shook his head. “The assumption we’ve been working on is that they had better not be able to match our new sorcery. And they bloody well can’t, not so far as we can tell. But that we use what we have for the same purposes as they use what they have…” He shook his head again. “No, by the powers above.”

“We can do many more things with ours,” Fernao said. “Once the war is over, it will turn the world upside down. But for now…” He shrugged. “For now, we do what needs doing, and that means beating Algarve.”

“They’re using it the right way up in Jelgava, throwing the Algarvians’ spells back in their faces,” Ilmarinen said. “Mezentio’s mages deserve that, and so do his soldiers. But the other? No.” He sounded very certain.

“How is it any different from sending dragons over their cities to drop eggs on them?” Pekka asked.

“That’s just war,” Ilmarinen said. “Everybody does it. The other-you wouldn’t, we wouldn’t, just be hurting a city if that ever happened, and you know it.”

Pekka grimaced. He wasn’t wrong, however much she wished he were. But she didn’t think she was wrong, either, as she answered, “We have to do what needs doing.”

“Do we?” Ilmarinen said. “Don’t you suppose the Algarvian mages say the same old thing-the same old lie-just before their soldiers start blazing Kaunians, or however they go about killing them to get their life energy?”

“That’s not fair,” Pekka said. “We’re not killing anyone to get the energy for our magecraft.”

“No, that’s true-we’re not. And so what?” Ilmarinen said. “If we use it the way you have in mind, we’ll be killing plenty on the other end.”

“That’s different,” Fernao said. “If you can’t get a man to listen to you, you hit him. If he hits you, you get a club. If he hits you with a club, you get a sword. If he hits you with a sword, you get a stick. If he blazes at you with a stick, you go after him with a behemoth, and so on.”

“I don’t like thinking of myself as a murderer,” Ilmarinen said. “I’ll do it, mind you, but I don’t like it.”

“Think of the Algarvians as murderers, then,” Pekka said. “They are, you know. EvenMasterSiuntio thought this fight was worth making-and Mezentio’s mages killed him, remember.”

“I’m not likely to forget, not when they came so bloody close to killing me, too,” Ilmarinen replied. “But I’m sick of war. I’m sick of killing. Aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” Pekka said. “But the fastest way to win it is the way Fernao said: to knock the Algarvians down till they can’t get up any more. Do you truly think anything else would do the job?”

“I’m not surprised you agree with him,” Ilmarinen said, and then laughed. “Ah, there-I’ve gone and made you angry. I wonder why.”

“You’ve made me angry, all right,” Pekka said tightly. “And I’ll tell you why: because you didn’t try to answer my question, that’s why. You just took a cheap blaze at me. Now answer, if you’d be so kind. Do you think anything else would do the job, or not?”

This time, Ilmarinen hesitated before speaking. Even so, he didn’t quite answer her question. What he said was, “There’s more to you than meets the eye. Do you know that?”

“I don’t much care,” Pekka said. “I’m going to ask you a third time, and I expect a straight answer. Can we beat the Algarvians and the Gyongyosians any other way than by knocking them flat?”

Asking Ilmarinen for a straight answer could easily prove as frustrating as asking a toddler to stop making a nuisance of himself. Pekka didn’t get one now, either. The master mage smiled at her till she wanted to punch him in the teeth. He said, “I’ll give you the calculations tonight.” Then, irrepressible, he leered. “I’ll just slide them under the door, so I’ll be sure not to interrupt anything.” With a sweet, carnivorous smile, he strode away.

Pekka glared after him. Fernao set a hand on her shoulder. “The more he gets you angry, the more he wins. That’s what he’s after, you know.”

“No.” Pekka shook her head. “You’re close, but you’re not quite right. The more he drives me crazy, the more he wins. He’s good at it, too. He’s been driving everyone crazy for the past fifty years.”

“Well, then, don’t worry about him,” Fernao said.

She laughed as mockingly as Ilmarinen had. “Tell the sun not to come up tomorrow, as long as you’re in a mood to give advice.”

She wondered if that might anger Fernao. Instead, he answered soberly: “I’ve been where the sun sometimes doesn’t come up for weeks-the land of the Ice People. It can happen. And you can ignore Ilmarinen.”

“It’s not easy,” she said, and then seized his hand. “Come to my room. If anything will help me do it, that will.” Had she ever been so blunt with Leino? She had trouble remembering. In any case, right now she wanted to forget.

Ilmarinendid slide papers under her door, and chose a very distracting moment to do it, too. A little while later, Fernao said, “I wonder if he did that on purpose.”

He ran his hand along her flank. The distraction hadn’t ruined things. Pekka felt sated and lazy-too lazy to get up and get the papers on the instant. She said, “He could tell by sorcery if he wanted to badly enough, but I don’t think he would bother. I hope he wouldn’t bother.”

“I hope you’re right,” Fernao answered. “Are you going to see what the calculations say?”

“Eventually,” Pekka said. “Part of me wants to know, but the rest, the rest”-she confessed to Fernao what she would never have told anyone else- “wonders if Ilmarinen isn’t absolutely right, though I wouldn’t tell him that in a thousand years, not when we have to do this come what may.” She felt a little better when Fernao leaned over and kissed her, but much better when he nodded to show he felt the same way.

The Unkerlanter mage nodded to Leudast.“There you are, Lieutenant,” the fellow said. “All your flesh is the same age again.”

Leudast tried the leg that had been wounded. Without a doubt, it felt worse than it had before the sorcerer cast his spell. But he could still use it. He nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “The fellow who helped heal my wound by aging it warned me to make sure I got rid of the spell once it had served its purpose.”

“I believe that,” the wizard said. After a moment’s thoughtful hesitation, he went on, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.” Leudast had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

And, sure enough, the wizard said, “How did your healer decide to use that particular charm on you? Very often, we reserve it for, ah, special cases.”

“What do you mean, special cases?” Leudast asked in turn. The mage didn’t answer. But Leudast had little trouble drawing his own conclusions. It had to mean something like, people more important than a lieutenant with a peasant accent. He said, “MarshalRatharpersonally promoted me.”

That had impressed the healer who’d treated him. It impressed this mage, too. He said, “No wonder the man used it with you, then.”

Not what you know-who you know. Leudast had had that thought before. Anybody could become a sergeant. Going that far was easy, if you were a good soldier-and if the Algarvians didn’t kill you, of course. He’d been pretty lucky, getting away with only two wounds. He wondered how many Unkerlanter soldiers who’d started the war with the redheads were still in it. Then he wondered how many of them had become officers. He’d been lucky in more than staying alive, and he knew it.

“You’re ready to go, Lieutenant.” Now that the sorcerer knew Leudast knewMarshalRathar -or at least that Rathar knew him-he was noticeably more polite.

“Thanks very much.” Leudast used a little politeness himself. He strode out of the Yaninan farmhouse the regimental healer was using, out into a rain that was beginning to freeze. His legdid hurt a good deal more than it had before he’d had the other wizard’s spell removed. He limped a little. He didn’t care. He’d already waited longer than he should have to get rid of that magic. Over the next month, he knew exactly how much the limb would improve.

And I know I won’t get killed in the next month, too, he thought. Had he been about to die, his leg would have told him of it. Ican be as reckless as I want on the field. The Algarvians can’t touch me. For a month, I’ve got a charmed life.

But was that really true? What would happen if, say, he picked up a stick right now and blazed out his own brains? He’d be dead, and his leg wouldn’t have warned him about it.

He shook his head to clear it. Thinking about such things was as likely to make that head ache as drinking too deep from a jar of spirits. He laughed under his breath. It wasn’t nearly so much fun, either.

His company occupied the rest of the village, or what was left of it. The Algarvians had made a stand here a few days before, and most of the huts- actually, the houses were a good deal finer than those in peasant villages in Unkerlant-had either burned or gone up in bursts of sorcerous energy in the nasty process of forcing them out. The ones who hadn’t got out still lay here and there; no one had bothered burying the corpses. Only the chilly weather kept the stink from being worse than it was.

Some of the men who couldn’t fit into the handful of houses still boasting walls and roofs kept dry in tents plundered from the redheads. The rest made do with their greatcoats and stout felt boots. The Unkerlanter army did issue those to everyone, even if Swemmel’s men might not get tents or, for that matter, much in the way of food.

But, regardless of whether Swemmel’s quartermasters got supplies to them, the soldiers had no trouble keeping themselves fed. Brass pots bubbled over fires the rain made smoky but couldn’t douse. Even the men who had only greatcoats seemed contented enough. One thing Unkerlanters knew was how to take care of themselves in the cold and rain.

Once upon a time, Leudast had assumed everybody all over the world knew such things. The trouble the redheads had in the snow the first winter of the war taught him otherwise. So did the fancy food and shelters he and his comrades kept taking from dead Algarvians. How could anyone who needed so much help to fight a war in bad weather seriously expect to win it?

Trying without much luck not to limp on his injured leg, Leudast went over to one of the stewpots and took out his mess tin. A cook with the hood to his greatcoat protecting his face ladled the tin full. “There you go, sir,” he said. His voice was curiously neutral; Leudast hadn’t been with the company long enough to have created much of an impression for good or ill.

“Thanks,” he said now, and dug in with a tin spoon. The stew was hot, which felt good. It had barley and oats and some rather nasty vegetables-the Yaninans ate things Unkerlanters didn’t-and bits of meat. Prodding one of those with his spoon, Leudast asked, “Do I want to know what this is?”

“Could be cursed near anything, sir,” the cook answered. “There’s chunks of two, three different beasts in the pots these days: behemoth and horse and unicorn, maybe even some real pork, too, but I’m not sure about that.”

“I won’t worry about it,” Leudast said. “Whatever it is, it’ll keep me going-and it doesn’t taste too bad.” The cook beamed when he added that.

Eggs started bursting, not very far to the east. As always, the Algarvians fought hard over every inch of ground they yielded. They counterattacked whenever they saw the chance. It was as if they were saying to the Unkerlanters, If you think you can beat us, you ‘re going to have to pay the price.

The ground shook under Leudast’s feet. For a moment, he thought the eggs accounted for that, but then somebody said, “More behemoths coming in.

He looked back toward the west, toward Unkerlant. Sure enough, the big, burly beasts were plenty to make the ground tremble. “What’s it like up ahead?” one of the men on the lead behemoth called as the beasts squelched forward.

“What do you think it’s going to be like?” Leudast answered. “There are redheads up there, and they won’t kiss you when they see you.”

“We’ll kiss them, by the powers above.” The fellow riding the behemoth leaned over to pat the heavy stick mounted on the beast’s armored back. “We’ll kiss them with this. We’ll kiss anybody who gets in our way, you bet we will.”

“Good. They deserve it.” Leudast paused, then asked, “Have you had any trouble from the Yaninans?”

“Not much. They’d be sorry if they gave us any, I’ll tell you that,” the man on the behemoth said. “Some of ‘em like us better than Mezentio’s whoresons, and that’s fine. Some of ‘em like the Algarvians better, I expect, but they haven’t had the nerve to show it, and they’d better not. The army is on our side.”

Leudast snorted. “Aye, I’ve heard the same thing. And it’ll do us just as much good as it ever did the Algarvians.”

“It can soak up some casualties,” the behemoth crewman said. “Better the Yaninans than us.”

“You’re right about that. We’ve paid our share and then some,” Leudast said. The fellow on the behemoth nodded and waved. The beast trudged forward. Its big feet came out of the mud, one after another, with heavy squelching sounds despite the snowshoes that spread its weight. The whole long column of behemoths followed. By the time they all went through, the road was a river of ooze stinking of behemoth dung.

One of Leudast’s men said, “There’ll be another big fight coming up pretty soon. They don’t move behemoths forward unless they mean it.”

“You’re probably right,” Leudast answered. “Only thing we can do about it is try and whip the redheads and not get hurt too bad ourselves.”

“That would be good.” The soldier didn’t sound as if he thought it were very likely to happen, though. Had Leudast been the stuffy sort of officer, he would have given the man a hard time and lectured him about efficiency. Since he’d never been able to stand that kind of officer before getting promoted himself, he kept his mouth shut.

Before long, the regimental commander-himself only a captain-came into the village with orders: “We go forward this afternoon.”

“Aye, sir.” Leudast nodded. “I thought as much when the behemoths came through earlier in the day.”

“You’re no fool, are you?” the captain said-his name was Drogden.

“There’s plenty who’d tell you otherwise, sir,” Leudast said, and got a laugh from Drogden before going on, “My guess is, I’ve just seen a lot of war.”

“Our whole kingdom has seen a lot of war, and my guess is that we’ve got a good deal more to see yet before the redheads are licked,”CaptainDrogden said.

“My guess is, that’s a pretty good guess,” Leudast said.

Drogden nodded. He was an older man, close to forty, weather-beaten enough to show he’d seen a lot of war, too. Maybe he was a jumped-up sergeant like Leudast, or maybe he’d spent a long, long time as a lieutenant. “Aye, the Algarvians have no quit in ‘em,” he said. “That’s plain enough. But still and all, things’ll be different once we finally go and break into Algarve.”

His voice held an odd anticipation. “Different how, sir?” Leudast asked.

“I’ll tell you how,” the regimental commander said. “We get to pay those whoresons back for everything they did to Unkerlant when their peckers were up, that’s how. We can burn their farms pretty cursed soon. We can wreck their villages. Our mages can tear up their ley line. And, speaking of peckers up, we can throw their women down on the ground and do what we want with them.”

Leudast grunted. He knew the Algarvians had done such things in the Unkerlanter territory they’d overrun. “Powers above, I’ve never even seen a redheaded woman before,” he said.

“Neither have I. But if we don’t get blazed, I expect we’re going to. It should be fun.” With a leer, Drogden slapped him on the back. “Spread the word through your company. It’ll give the men something extra to fight for.”

Most of his troopers, Leudast discovered, had already had that thought for themselves. Some looked forward to it. But one man said, “Far as I’m concerned, we should just kill all the Algarvians, the men and the women both. Then we won’t have to worry about ‘em ever again.” Leudast couldn’t deny that that notion held more than a little appeal for him, too.

When the attack went in that afternoon, the Unkerlanters pushed forward for a couple of miles without much trouble. Then they came to the Skamandros River, which the rain had made too wide and swift to ford, and discovered that the redheads had wrecked all the bridges over it. They also discovered that the Algarvians had a demon of a lot of well-concealed egg-tossers on the far bank. “What now?” Leudast asked when he sawCaptainDrogden again.

“Now we wait for the artificers to make some new bridges, or else for our dragons and egg-tossers to smash up the redheads and give us some kind of chance to cross,” Drogden answered. “Don’t know what else we can do.”

“It’s not so bad, sir,” Leudast said. “We’re moving forward, and that counts for more than anything else.”

Sidroc hadn’t liked Unkerlanters, and they weren’t that much different from Forthwegians. Now that the Algarvian army was forced back into Yanina, and Plegmund’s Brigade with it, he discovered that he really didn’t like Yaninans.

“Where’s your food?” he demanded of a skinny villager with cold, dark eyes and a big gray mustache. He said it in Forthwegian, and then in Algarvian. The Yaninan looked back at him, shrugged, and spread his hands as if to say he didn’t understand.

“Blaze the son of a whore,” Ceorl suggested. “That’ll teach him.”

“It won’t do us any good, though,” Sidroc said. “Here, watch me be as efficient as an Unkerlanter. Go inside the house there and bring out this bastard’s wife. Don’t get rough with her or anything, but bring her.”

Ceorl laughed. “I’ll do it. I think I know what you’ve got in mind.”

In he went. The Yaninan villager looked alarmed. He looked a lot more alarmed when the woman cried out. But when he took a step toward the house, Sidroc aimed his stick at the fellow’s face. “Don’t even think about it, pal,” he said. Either the words or the gesture got through; the Yaninan froze, though his mouth twisted in a snarl of hate.

Out came Ceorl, manhandling a graying woman about half his size. Sidroc knew no Yaninan, but he was sure she was calling Ceorl everything she could. Ceorl realized that, too. “I hope the old shitter stays clammed up,” he said. “I’d enjoy doing in this bitch.”

“We’ll find out in a minute.” Sidroc switched back to Algarvian: “One more time, pal. Where is the food? She’ll be sorry if you keep quiet.”

Looking daggers at him, the Yaninan answered in pretty good Algarvian of his own: “Dig under the water barrel.” He looked as if he wanted to say a good deal more than that, but he bit it back. That was one of the wiser things he’d ever done.

“No.” Sidroc gestured. “You dig, pal. And you had better come up with some good stuff, too.”

He went into the house with the Yaninan, and watched the skinny old man dig up the dirt floor. What came out was plenty to satisfy him: hams and sausages, all securely wrapped to keep them safe while they were out of sight. At his delighted exclamation, Ceorl came in to see, too. “Well, all right,” the ruffian said enthusiastically. “I guess we let the old whore live.”

“You see?” Sidroc said to the Yaninan. “You just saved your wife.”

“But the two of you, this is too much for you,” the man with the gray mustache said.

“We’ve got friends.” Sidroc grabbed a long string of sausages. “Come on, Ceorl. Lend a hand.”

Between them, they did a good job of plundering the peasants’ larder. When they showed their comrades what they’d got, they were the heroes of the moment. “Haven’t eaten this well since we got out of Forthweg,”SergeantWerferth said. He was exaggerating, but not by a great deal.

Sudaku, the blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera who’d broken out of the Mandelsloh pocket with the men of Plegmund’s Brigade, nodded. “Good food,” he said in Algarvian. He was eating enough for two himself.

“If we had more spirits, we’d have more spirits,” Ceorl said, and laughed loudly at his own wit. Sidroc chuckled, too. He wasn’t going to let a fellow Forthwegian down, not even a son of a whore like Ceorl.

Werferth said, “Maybe you ought to go shake down that Yaninan of yours again. If he hid the food under the water barrel, he’s probably got a distillery on the roof.”

“I would not be a bit surprised,” Sidroc said-in Algarvian, so the men who weren’t Forthwegians but had attached themselves to the now motley unit could understand. He nodded to Ceorl. “What do you say we go have a look?”

“Probably find that ugly bastard and his uglier woman drunk and screwing their brains out.” Ceorl started to heave himself to his feet.

Before he got upright, eggs started landing not far away. He threw himself flat. So did Sidroc. So did all the men who’d been sharing the booty they’d found. Veterans knew better than to stay on their feet, or even sitting, when the Unkerlanters started getting frisky.

More of the eggs landed west of the Yaninan village than square on it. That cheered Sidroc, but not for long. A couple of minutes later, Algarvians- and a few Forthwegians, and a couple of theValmieranKaunians who’d taken service withKingMezentio -came running back from their forward positions. In the din, he needed a little while to catch what they were shouting. When he did, he wished he hadn’t; it was, “Behemoths! Unkerlanter behemoths!”

SergeantWerferthstuck his head up in the hope of spotting an Algarvian officer-or perhaps in the hope of not spotting one. When he didn’t, he spoke in Algarvian: “I am in charge here. We are going to get over that river east of the village as quick as we can. We have no hope of fighting their behemoths without some of our own.”

That was a bitter truth the men of Plegmund’s Brigade and the Algarvians had learned in too many encounters throughout eastern Unkerlant. Sidroc said, “Once we’re over the bridge”-he hoped there was a bridge; he’d swum one stream to escape Swemmel’s soldiers, and didn’t want to have to try it again-”we’d better wreck it, to keep the enemy from getting a foothold on the other side.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ceorl said. SergeantWerferth only shrugged. He’d always paid more attention to the proper rules of soldiering and less to what would save his own neck than made Sidroc comfortable.

But he was the one who’d ordered the retreat. He didn’t expect his men to do the impossible; too many of them had died trying. Sidroc’s boots squelched through mud. That would slow the behemoths down, too, even if it wouldn’t slow them down so much as he would have liked.

“Here! Over here!” That was an Algarvian voice, and one full of the authority the redheads effortlessly assumed. “Here is the crossing of the Skamandros. We shall pass over it, hold it open as long as we can, and then destroy it to keep the Unkerlanters from following.”

“There, you see?” Sidroc said cheerfully. “I ought to be an officer.”

“You ought to get a good kick in the slats.” Ceorl also sounded cheerful, as if he would have enjoyed delivering the kick. All things considered, he probably would have.

The bridge, when they reached it, was wooden and narrow: a miserable, rickety piece of work, like a lot of the things Sidroc had seen in Yanina. “Behemoths would have a demon of a time crossing on this,” he said as he started across it himself.

“Don’t want footsoldiers crossing, either,” Werferth said. “Swemmel’s whoresons are downright nasty when it comes to grabbing bridgeheads.” He was, without a doubt, right about that. Sidroc sighed with relief when he stepped into the mud on the far bank. The Unkerlanters would be a while crossing, anyhow.

A couple of Algarvian mages stood on the eastern bank of the Skamandros. One said to the other, “We’ll give it a few minutes more and then bring down the bridge. We don’t want to let the Unkerlanters get close enough to try a counterspell and stop us.”

“That’s the truth,” the other wizard said. “I’ve still got hopes of living to get old and gray and crotchety. A few behemoths in the wrong place don’t do those plans any good.”

They both laughed. Algarvians took pride in absurdity. Sidroc didn’t. He was just glad he’d got over the river before the redheads sorcerously smashed the bridge.

“To me!” called the Algarvian officer who’d known where the crossing was. “There’s a village ahead. We can shelter in it.”

“Who knows?” Sidroc said. “Maybe the stinking Yaninans will have more hams buried under the water barrel. Here’s hoping.” Marching made him weary, as it always did, but he wasn’t hungry. That in itself made a pleasant novelty.

He hadn’t gone far before a rending crash behind him announced the demise of the bridge. If Swemmel’s sorcerers had tried a counterspell, it hadn’t worked. Sergeant Werferth said, “Keep moving, boys. The sooner we get to this village, wherever it is, the happier we’ll be.”

The village wasn’t far ahead. Yapping dogs announced its presence before the road came out from among a grove of fruit trees and let Sidroc see it. He’d had the same thing happen more than once back in Unkerlant.

“Keep moving,” the Algarvian officer commanded, leading from the front as his kind usually did. “We’re going to dig in here. We’re going to stop the Unkerlanters in their tracks.” As his kind usually did, he sounded utterly certain of that. What difference did it make that powers-above-only-knew-how-many similar declarations had been wrong before?

Sidroc knew what difference it made. “We’d cursed well better stop Swemmel’s bastards,” he said. “We haven’t got a lot of room left to play around with.” He scowled at the village ahead, and at the dogs trying to nerve themselves for a run at the soldiers tramping up the road towards them.

“We’ve got to keep trying, no matter what,”SergeantWerferth said. “If we don’t, we’re cooked, on account of-” He suddenly stopped talking. He suddenly stopped walking, too, crumpling down to the roadway as if he were a marionette with cut strings. He twitched a couple of times and lay still.

“He’s dead,” Ceorl said in slow wonder. “I fornicating can’t believe it. I was fornicating sure he’d outlive every fornicating one of us.”

That thought had gone through Sidroc’s mind, too. Now only anger filled him. He pointed ahead. “The beam came from that first house there. I saw it. Now we pay back the bastard who did it.”

“Now we pay back the whole fornicating village,” said Sudaku, the man from the Phalanx of Valmiera. He might be only a Kaunian, Sidroc thought, but he’s a pretty cursed good soldier.

A low growl ran through the men-Forthwegians, Kaunians, and Algarvians. Everyone who’d known Werferth had liked him. And he was one of their own, and a civilian sniper had blazed him. They shook themselves out into a skirmish line and advanced on the village at a purposeful trot. Most of the dogs in front of it fled, yelping in dismay. The soldiers blazed the ones that didn’t.

Another beam winked at them from that farmhouse window. This time, it didn’t hit anybody. A couple of soldiers blazed back, while others moved toward the farmhouse. Along with the rest, Sidroc trotted into the village. “Out!” he shouted in Algarvian. “Out! Out! Out!” A dozen, a score, of voices took up the cry. A couple of men even knew how to say it in Yaninan.

Confused and frightened-looking villagers started coming forth. Sidroc blazed the first one he saw, a woman a few years older than he was. She fell with a shriek. The rest of the Yaninans cried out in horror. Then their yells turned to agony, too, for all the men who fought for Mezentio started blazing at them. It was vengeance swift and sure, vengeance a hundredfold for the soldier their countryman had slain.

Afterwards, Sidroc remembered the massacre in red fragments. An old man with no teeth yammering in mushy terror, mouth open very wide, till Sidroc’s beam blew out the back of his head. A young man charging the soldiers but falling before he could use his fists, the only weapons he had. A young woman running and then twisting every which way as three beams caught her at once. A fat grandmother standing and dying so she almost blocked the doorway to her house. The little girl who came out when the grandmother’s body didn’t block the doorway well enough, and who died a moment later, too.

It didn’t take long, the massacre. “They had it coming,” Sidroc said. A few Yaninans still writhed and moaned. Most lay where they had fallen.

“Of course they had it coming,” the young Algarvian officer said. “Now dig in. I don’t know how long the line of the Skamandros will hold the Unkerlanters. Not long enough, curse it.” He was likely right about that. Sidroc got to work.